The Linux Link Tech Show
AbOUT the Show
The Oldest Running Linux Show On The Planet 1 was originally started by Lehigh Valley Linux User Group members Dann Washko and Linc Fessenden in September of 2003. Allan Metzler, “the guy that brought the equipment” soon joined the show as a regular host in October of that year. In early 2005, Patrick Davila, a member of their LUG joined the show as a permanent host, completing the current Tech Show lineup. Initially, their goal was to simply provide “a weekly *live* webcasted radio style show about Linux and Technology” 2, but they have since expanded out into Podcasting. In fact, they were one of the very early adopters, and their very own Linc Fessenden wrote BashPodder, being unhappy with the current state of Linux podcast clients at the time.
The Linux Link Tech Show is broadcast live on the internet every Wednesday at 8:30 P.M. Eastern Standard Time. Podcasts are made available shortly after under a Creative Commons license. As of July 2007 TLLTS has produced over 200 episodes.
Guests
The Linux Link Tech Show have had a number of key figures (from 15 different countries) from the free and open source software community as guests . Some of these guests include Richard Stallman, Chris DiBona, Bruce Perens, Ian Murdock, Patrick Volkerding, Mark Shuttleworth, Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza.
For a complete list of interviews see Past Guests
Running Goofs and Jokes
The Tech Show has a long history of running gags and goofs. Some of which include:
- Dann recompiling his kernel during the live show, or doing operating system upgrades to the machine that streams the show out live on the air. He once reconfigured the window manager on the machine running the VOIP client used to talk to guests on the Asterisk server. He crashed the system as a result.
- Occasionally you might hear Dann’s kids screaming in the background. Pat usually makes light of the situation by telling Dann to stop beating his kids.
- Pat frequently refers to Gentoo as the “GCC Screen Saver” due to the long compilation process.
- Dann frequently passes gas, grossing out the listeners and other hosts.
- Pat refers to Apple as “Crapple”, and Apple products sarcastically as “Superior Apple Products”.
- Allan’s wife is a huge fan of country music star, Tim McGraw. He has frequently driven her to concerts across the northeast and as a result received much ribbing from the guys. Allan has educated the audience regarding “Timmy Touchers”.
- "Linc hates freedom!" is a play on the fact that a small zealous vocal minority of the F/OSS community would sometimes brand someone a "freedom hater" if they wanted to use any proprietary software, codecs or libraries on their computer systems.
- Dann asking the guest if the particular project they are working on is going to sign a patent agreement with Microsoft. Also known as Dann's new standard question. So far he has asked this to Jim McQuillan of the Linux Terminal Server Project and to Ken VanDine of the Foresight Linux Project.
Spinoff Shows & Guest Appearances
In March 2006, Dann started the Linux and Games Entertainment Radio podcast, better known simply as “LaGER”. It mainly focuses around gaming on Linux, and Free/Open Source multimedia applications. It features a revolving cast via Skype, and is usually produced 2-4 times a month.
Dann and Pat have been contributors to T.W.A.T. radio since its inception.
“Windows Crash Radio” is featured once every dark hour of the year.
The guys have collaborated with Aaron Newcomb from the_source videocast during the 2006 Ohio Linux Fest.
Linc was a guest on the Security Monkey podcast on February 27th, 2006.
Pat guest hosted the Linux Reality podcast on September 12th, 2006.
Dann was interviewed on episode 57 of the lottalinuxlinks podcast on December 15, 2007.